No Treatries

Exodus 23

32 “Make no treaties with them or their gods. 33 They must not live in your land, or they will cause you to sin against me. If you serve their gods, you will be caught in the trap of idolatry.”

God is giving instructions to the nation of Israel as they prepare to journey to the Promised Land. God is very clear in these instructions: God’s people are not to make treaties with pagans, for to do so will ensare them into idolatry. When I think about the Church in this nation today, it saddens me to see the treaties we have made with the pagans. We’ve allowed the government to take over our responsibility of caring for the widows and orphans. We gleefully ingest the pop culture, entertainment, and way of thinking. While we are called to live IN this world, we are called to NOT BE of this world. In fact, God tells the Church that friendship with the world makes us enemies of His. While we must love the sinner, we must hate the sin. Our involvement with pagan folks must be with the ultimate purpose of leading them to Christ. Yes, we must gain their trust in order to do that, we just need to make sure that we don’t allow them to lead us into idolatry. We, as the Church in America, have not done a very good job in this regard.